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Around both my experiences of childbirth, I was acutely aware of a culture promoting "natural" birth. NCT leaders; baby yoga teachers; breast-feeding consultants all talked about vaginal births as if they were some morally superior ‘choice’.
I was congratulated by midwives for having birthed twins vaginally, despite the fact it was never what I wanted, and has left me with lasting prolapses and continence issues.
I thought then, & think now, that glorifying vaginal birth is misogynistic anti-Enlightenment bullshit.
I thought then, & think now, that glorifying vaginal birth is misogynistic anti-Enlightenment bullshit.
It’s like breastfeeding. It’s great if you can do it with no problems. But luckily, there are perfectly good alternatives – formula; caesarians – if you’re not able to do it, or don’t want to.
These alternatives are *a million times better* than the significant risks and pain involved in struggling for a vaginal birth, or to breastfeed, when it’s proving tricky, painful or dangerous.
Only in a profoundly misogynistic culture, would those alternatives be denigrated as the result of women’s lack of moral fibre, and routinely denied to women. With tragic, awful consequences. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/shrewsbury-maternity-scandal/shrewsbury-maternity-nhs-inquiry-deaths-midwives-b1769131.html
Oh yeah, and one of my twins nearly died during the supposedly praise-worthy vaginal birth that I was pretty much forced to undergo. So people uncritically promoting this sort of practice can FUCK RIGHT OFF. God, this makes me angry.
